Ad Blocking Wars; Pinterest Has 100 Million MAU

Apple’s momentous ad-blocking move and any publisher carnage it creates are mere “collateral damage” in a greater war between Silicon Valley’s titans (Google, Facebook and Apple), writes The Verge’s Nilay Patel. Apple’s new iOS 9 release has been covered as an existential threat to mobile web browsing. But those publishers are just the pawns falling before the king, says Patel, who argues Apple’s aggression toward digital sites has nothing to do with publishers and everything to do with undercutting Google’s dominance. Read it.

For the first time, Pinterest has revealed its monthly active user base, and it’s far larger than eMarketer’s latest estimate of 41.1 million by year’s end. With 100 million MAUs, Pinterest is ready to prove it’s worth that $11 billion market cap. The firm increased its focus on ads this year, and saw early success with its core product, Promoted Pins. But there’s still work to do. “Pinterest’s 100 million users are dwarfed by the user bases of some digital contemporaries it competes with for ad dollars,” write NYT’s Mike Isaac. “It is one-third the size of Instagram and Twitter, for instance, and it is an even smaller fraction of the nearly one billion users of WhatsApp and the more than one billion members of Facebook.” More. And, read the blog post.

Running On Data

Under Armour has described itself as a tech company, which may seem strange because everyone knows it as a sports clothing manufacturer. But in the impending world of data and wearables, those two things are heavily intertwined. Shareen Pathak of Digiday takes a look at how Under Armour is building a network of customer loyalty data, fitness audiences and both traditional and mobile commerce to create a hybrid clothing/tech company. By purchasing social media networks dedicated to fitness, and partnering with Sports Authority, Under Armour hopes to build its own well-greased customer funnel. Read on.

A Takeover Is Brewing

Anheuser-Busch InBev has approached rival bev giant SABMiller for a proposed merger that would “bring together two of the country’s most prolific advertisers and create an advertising giant,” reports WSJ’s Suzanne Vranica. Anheuser, the 44th biggest ad spender in the US, shelled out $539 million for ads in America last year. SABMiller, the 55th largest spender in the US, spent $430 million. But as often happens with mega-mergers, the merged brewer would likely spend less overall. “The combined company will have more clout and will be able to purchase ads cheaper,” says Kantar Media CRO Jon Swallen. Read it.